The fight over one of Mayor Willie Brown's pet projects -- clearing San Francisco's streets of news rack clutter -- produced two of the most unusual scenes in City Hall's recent history this week.

Bay Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann, father of Newsrack Advisory Committee chairman Dan Brugmann, stood up in a meeting room Thursday and bellowed at his son that he was part of a Brown administration attempt to railroad through an unconstitutional law.

The cause of these odd goings- on was the sudden introduction at the Board of Supervisors of a contract between the city and Adshel Inc. for the company to place 1,000 multiple-publication news racks on San Francisco streets. Publishers, all of whom object to the news rack concept, say they were kept in the dark about the contract's introduction by Board of Supervisors PresidentBarbara Kaufman on Monday.

The 20-year contract will be considered by the supervisors' Finance Committee on Wednesday at 1 p.m.

The racks would be in the busiest parts of San Francisco. All the existing racks on public sidewalks in those areas would be removed.

Brown says the profusion of thousands of racks, many of them broken or vandalized, is unsightly and that the devices block sidewalks.

Adshel will make money by selling ads on the backs of 450 racks. It would maintain the racks, while individual publications would put their product in the racks' boxes.

After five years, the city would get 5 percent of Adshel's ad revenue if the ad sales exceed $2 million. Every publication that wants a space in the racks would have to pay the city a $30 administrative fee annually for each slot it uses in every rack.

"All of us wanted input," the famously bombastic Bay Guardian publisher said. "Some of us have been in business here since the Gold Rush. We don't like arbitrarily being swept off the streets by Willie Brown," he told the committee being headed by his son, the Guardian's former circulation manager who now runs the news rack program for Brown's Department of Public Works.

Throughout the session, Dan Brugmann struggled to remain composed, saying that the city doesn't give out much information about contracts being negotiated.

The newspaper agency's Freeland, of the law firm Cooper, White & Cooper, agreed with the elder Brugmann, an event as rare as snow in the Sahara Desert.

"The Finance Committee should stop this train for 30 days and let everyone in this room come in with their remedies for their own problems," Freeland said.

He also saluted Bruce Brugmann for speaking up about the contract.

Every publisher in town objects to some degree to the new law and the contract. They would prefer a self-policing solution. The Newspaper Agency was among the bidders that lost out to Adshel.

Bruce Brugmann said Kaufman and the mayor were rushing through the contract before Brugmann's political ally, Supervisor Tom Ammiano, becomes board president January 8.

Kaufman scoffed at that, pointing out that the board's membership will be the same next year as it is now.